In the ongoing discussion of Pagan ethics, Carol Christ's nine touchstones are a pretty good place to start. I'd forgotten that one of the phrases in a prayer that I pray every morning came from Christ's book.

The breath of my body will bless.The cells of my being now sing,With gratitude and reawakening.Mother, make me a perfect priestess to your service.And allow me, in all that I do today,To help to repair the web.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

There is something to it being class based, as I’ve discussed before and will continue to evaluate – a smug sense that somehow prejudice against [the] lower class . . . is justified, and thus you shouldn’t defend those kinds of people. It’s also not a mistake that the bulk of the people gulping this sewage are white and male. It would appear that the upper class white males of the Democratic Party have more in common with the upper class white male Republicans than they care to admit. It is not a mistake, I think, that the people on the left who responded best to the anti-Clinton spew of this round are socio-economically similar to those on the Right who share their taste in Drudge and sludge.

The stream is shrunk--the pool is dry,And we be comrades, thou and I;With fevered jowl and dusty flankEach jostling each along the bank;And by one drouthy fear made still,Forgoing thought of quest or kill.Now ’neath his dam the fawn may see,The lean Pack-wolf as cowed as he,And the tall buck, unflinching, noteThe fangs that tore his father’s throat.

The pools are shrunk--the streams are dry,And we be playmates, thou and I,Till yonder cloud--Good Hunting!--looseThe rain that breaks our Water Truce.

Sunday, June 08, 2008

One thing that I discussed yesterday with the nice young man from Mother Jones was whether any good can come from the intense sexism directed at Hillary Clinton by the press and some supposedly liberal bloggers. I mentioned that Anita Hill went through hell and lost her bid to keep Clarence Thomas off SCOTUS, but it did open up the eyes of a lot of women and it did lead to changes that have made it less acceptable than it used to be to sexually harass women in the work place. (Yeah, it still happens, but, believe me, it's not as bad as it used to be.) My hope is that we'll see a resurgence of feminist thought, of discussion about the issue of sexism, and a move towards getting more women into politics.

On que, the XX chromosome side of left blogistan responds today w some v. good writing.

This week, Laura Flanders said we shouldn't have to elect women to get gender justice (among other things). I agree. But doesn't gender justice include having women in government? I think putting more women into positions of power will improve society, if only because it opens up opportunities for women. It’s odd that this concept seems to have become controversial among feminists. I would much rather have Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state than a white man who shared the same views. Her promotion may inspire girls, especially black girls. Having the career she does may make it easier for white men in power to imagine another black woman in that job. I understand that it isn’t enough to add only a few token women. But it’s a start. We don’t get parity overnight. It starts with a few women, followed by a few more women, followed by a few more. I think women are more likely to change systems if we can get a foothold in them. I'm writing this before I go on vacation, and so, I don't know the latest in the presidential race. But I have been mystified by progressive women who say gender doesn’t or shouldn’t matter when choosing a candidate. I guess this means that they have no problem with men holding the presidency forever as long as the men have good policies. The same goes for race. I’m not saying gender or race should be the only things that matter. If you think Obama would significantly improve the lives of women, or the lives of some women, or your life, and Clinton wouldn’t have done so, I understand your vote. If you think it’s important to have an African American in the White House and you like Obama’s policies, I understand your vote. (Mix these thoughts up however you want.) But if you’re a feminist and you say that the gender or race of a candidate doesn’t matter, then I’m floored.

I don't believe Obama's win is [due to the sexist treatment that Clinton received].. He won it fair and square, carrying a heavy historical burden of his own. But that doesn't mean it didn't happen. Acknowledging that doesn't create a "toxic legacy" and neither is it just the sad lament of "lonely people" (translation: lonely old women.) But I'm sure those memes will catch on and we'll all be told that we imagined it all. (Youtube is our new best friend.)

Clinton's campaign ripped open a hole in our culture and forced us to look inside. And what we found was a simmering cauldron of crude, sophomoric sexism and ugly misogyny that a lot of us knew existed but didn't realize was still so socially acceptable that it could be broadcast on national television and garner nary a complaint from anybody but a few internet scolds like me. It was eye-opening, to say the least.

Jill responds to the amazing bullshit that the best woman for the job is a man:

I voted for Barack Obama. I like him a lot. He is very good on women’s issues. But that doesn’t make him the best “woman” for the job, any more than Bill Clinton was “the first Black president.” It erases the realities of being female to argue that a man can be a good enough “woman president;” it erases the fact that “good on women’s issues” is not the same as “woman;” it erases the importance of having women in positions of power. And it discounts just how huge of a milestone it will be when a woman is elected to the Presidency. We can applaud Obama on his progressive stances and keep him accountable on his less progressive ones without attributing to him a characteristic that he simply does not have. We can celebrate the practical and symbolic importance of his run for President without having to make him everything to everyone. And if we want to be as “post-gender” as Walker suggests, then perhaps we should really shift the paradigm and expect that issues of gender, racial and social justice be fundamental in any political system, and not the providence of “special interest groups” like women.

Someone was telling me in earnest the other day that Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) should be the VP pick because, and I am not making this up, she's younger and prettier than the other women being discussed, and endorsed Clinton -- so shouldn't that make her a great person to appease the Clinton supporters?

Other points were offered in her defense, but if someone argued in favor of adding a Black candidate to the ticket on the basis of 'well, their skin's a lot lighter than the other people of color that we considered,' that would pretty much be the end of seriously paying attention to what they had to say. And rightly. Not to say the two things are directly equivalent, either. Just that where racist arguments are generally recognized right away, sexist arguments can be slipped by in even progressive circles, among people who insist that they're feminists, without usually causing much embarassment.

And yes, that'd be the Blanche Lincoln, who voted with Republicans on FISA and the estate tax, and was delisted from EMILY's List for casting anti-choice votes in the Senate.

When I argued the other day that people with bad records on gender issues should be automatically ruled out, it was exactly that sort of tokenism I was suggesting should be avoided. I didn't argue that Clinton should be picked, or even that another woman should necessarily be picked, but that someone should be selected that showed respect and consideration towards the issues that are important to her supporters. Issues that include, but are definitely not limited to, reproductive justice.

That's a whole lot of serious discussion about feminism. Let's hope that it's only the beginning.

I'm a really bad gardener, because I forget what this is. But I like it. I hope it makes seeds so I can grow it again next year.

Just planted morning glory, woad, dill, and French thyme seeds in the new herb bed. The moon, fortunately, is waxing, although I'm not always particularly choosey about that; when seedlings arrive, they go in the ground; I'm not going to wait two weeks for the moon to be in the right phase.

What I do is to meditate with the seeds, breathe with them, let them know how much I want them to grow. I send strength and "wic" to them.

And I do some Reiki on them. Once they're planted, I tend to do some Reiki on the water that I use to water them. The woad seeds are a few years old, so I gave them a bit more attention. Then, I drew a Tarot card to see if there was anything that the seeds wanted me to know. I pulled the Knight of Swords: all those tiny seeds, shouting in unison, "Let's Go!" So I went directly out and planted them, still inside the circle that I'd cast, watered them, and then came inside to open the circle.

A Virginia lawyer who only gave me her blog handle, Hecate, said that Clinton's fight was ultimately thwarted by the forces she was trying to overcome. "Any woman who gets close to a position of power gets treated badly," she said. "The calls to drop out wouldn't have happened if she were a man. The attitude was that she needs to let the deserving man have his job." She added, "This election has ripped the cover off things we like to hide. Lots of young women and female bloggers have had their eyes opened to how sexist our society is."

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About Me

I'm a woman, a Witch, a mother, a grandmother, an eco-feminist, a gardener, a reader, a writer, and a priestess of the Great Mother Earth. Hecate appears in the
Homeric Ode to Demeter, which tells of Hades who caught Persophone
"up reluctant on his golden car and bare her away lamenting. . . . But no one, either of the deathless gods or of mortal men, heard her voice, nor yet the olive-trees bearing rich fruit: only tenderhearted Hecate, bright-coiffed, the daughter of Persaeus, heard the girl from her cave . . . ."